This day, 30 years ago!

Jaya Plans! Karunanidhi Inaugurates! 😊

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23rd January 1994

Two prominent news reports donned the newspapers on this particular day.

The Anna Science Centre, Trichy, houses a science museum and planetarium. The entire Planetarium and its accessories were donated by the Government of Japan under the Cultural Grant-in-aid Scheme.

Secondly, Police Abuse in Punjab in the 1990s assumed alarming proportions - so much that even the President of the United States Bill Clinton was forced to express his concerns over human rights violations in the State by the police force.

A report in India Today in 1994 states that,

Many commoners especially the poor were held illegally in police ‘custody’, and tortured mercilessly, and forced to confess to crimes that they did not do.

When the National Human Rights Commission was on a three-day visit to the state, the commission was flooded with over 400 petitions against the Punjab Police, prompting its chairman, Justice (retd) Ranganath Mishra, to remark that even though normalcy had returned to the state, the police's conduct was still far from normal.

Shockingly, even the Chief Secretary of the State admitted candidly that, “Complaints against the police were pouring in from all quarters”.

Things went to such alarming proportions that, even the Punjab High Court had to step forward and pass strictures against the Punjab Police, and also called for compensation to be paid to victims of police excesses.

In most of the cases, there seems to have been a politician-police nexus in fleecing the general public,

says the report.

Now, what exactly made the Punjab Police super-powerful, with such draconian powers in their hands, which was much above their counterparts in other parts of the nation?

Well, the 1980s in Punjab was a period of revolt and insurgency by Sikh militants, who wanted a separate state - Khalistan, which resulted in indiscriminate killings of civilians, politicians, [including the former PM Indira Gandhi], etc.

Under the guise of militancy, even criminals started to threaten and rob rich landowners, business establishments etc. This prompted the government to respond with force.

The Indian government dismissed the elected government in Punjab and imposed President’s Rule!

Moreover, India’s Parliament enacted counterinsurgency legislation that [in a way] facilitated human rights violations and shielded security forces from accountability for these violations.

The National Security Act was amended to allow for detention without trial for up to two years in Punjab for acts prejudicial to the security or defense of India.

The Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act of 1987 (TADA), provided the police with powers of search, seizure, and arrest.

There were widespread allegations that police routinely used torture to obtain confessions from detainees and/or planted evidence as a means of detaining them under TADA. TADA provided immunity from prosecutions for any acts in “good faith done or purported to be done in pursuance of this Act”.

It was in this backdrop that Bill Clinton was forced to call for an end to police abuse.

But why did Clinton have to interfere in Punjab’s police abuse and crimes?

It’s not without a reason though!

When Clinton took over as the 42nd President of the United States in the year 1993 - 

America's families and communities were facing serious crime problems.

More violent crimes were reported in 1992 than ever before, with nearly twenty lakh cases of murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults occurring in the United States.

Gun crime had skyrocketed to the highest point in 20 years with more than half a million total gun crimes reported. Parents fought a daily battle to keep their children away from drugs and gangs, as more young people than ever were involved in violent crimes.

In 1992 alone, more than 850,000 children were victims of violent crime, and guns killed 5,379 children — an average of nearly fifteen every day. Communities struggled to fight crime, but the federal response remained bogged down in partisan differences, says an official report.

That’s hence President Clinton and his Vice President Gore focused on reducing crime rates in the US!

This they did by enacting policies that imposed tougher penalties and enforcement along with smart crime prevention measures.

One such smart crime prevention measure was the introduction of a new and novel policing method – Combating Crime with Community Policing!

It was a historic move in America. since community policing involved the community in tackling crime, which proved a tremendous success.

The Clinton administration’s deployment of its comprehensive community crime control strategy for a safer America, was emulated by many countries across the world.

That very same year, Tamil Nadu also saw the birth of the Friends of Police Movement.

The movement, founded in 1993 by Philip V. Prateep, when he was Superintendent of police in Ramanathapuram district, soon received official sanction by the state government and it was soon expanded state-wide as well.

PS: To read more of such past diary entries, just use the hashtag, #memoriesfromdiaries

News Sources curated from: Human Rights Watch [HRW], India Today & Justice.Gov